Workforce & Economic Mobility

SPR has partnered with the US Department of Labor (DOL) to support federal workforce programs since its founding in 1991. These programs—currently authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act or WIOA—include education, employment, training, and related services for youth, adults, dislocated workers, veterans, people with disabilities, and others from underserved communities who have faced structural challenges or systemic biases in education and work.

Today, our WIOA experts provide a wide range of technical support to these programs and to the broader public workforce system. We’ve conducted large-scale impact evaluations of workforce services and implementation studies of new policies. We’ve also designed and supported field-level stakeholder engagement with the goal of informing federal and state research and evaluation priorities.

SPR partners with WIOA partners closer to home, too. We helped the California Workforce Development Board evaluate its Workforce Accelerator program and NOVA and partners to design a regional inclusive technology careers initiative. We work across WIOA titles and agencies to help workforce programs serve everyone, everywhere, more effectively.

SPR understands that the most effective career advancement strategies are connected to the workplace—whether through job design, job training and education, or supported advancement opportunities. We also know that opportunity is not equally distributed.

That’s why we work with employers, industry and professional associations, and community partnerships to improve job design and job quality. It’s why we work with states and local partnerships to scale inclusive earn-and-learn strategies, including apprenticeship, with a focus on equity and inclusion.

These efforts directly link learning, work, and career advancement for people with productivity for businesses and industries. For low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, and others who have not fully benefited from economic expansion, these strategies can provide pathways to good careers and ensure that industries and communities everywhere can benefit from the talents and ambitions of everyone. We recognize that work is changing, impacted by everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to climate change to automation—and we support our partners and clients in connecting learning to work and being prepared and able to adapt.

SPR was founded on the idea that better use of data and research could improve programs and services for people, firms, and communities who need them—and boost prosperity for everyone. Since 1991, SPR has supported DOL in data analysis and reporting (for WIOA and discretionary programs), conducted thousands of data quality reviews, and coached hundreds of workforce analysts through critical data challenges.

We have also provided technical support to states building longitudinal data systems through the Workforce Data Quality Initiative since the program’s inception, and we have provided technical assistance to DOL’s Office of Disability Employment Policy, developing tools for data collection, reporting, analysis, and program design to boost the inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. These and dozens of other projects emphasizing all aspects of data collection, management, application, and governance at different scales form the core of SPR’s workforce data practice.